You don’t have Cable TV, right? My signal visibly degraged a couple months ago. The tech who came by put what I would probably call a noise reducer — there is a signal strenght that goes out by default assumes the is split between the TV and the modem. If you don’t have the TV, the signal, I guess, fries the modem.

It sounded a little like hoodoo to me, and I still needed a new modem, but it worked out. They also ran new wire from the roof — if you’ve ever checked out the wiring jobs the do, the often will split cables, or you get crimps of other damage. It’s still a pretty mechanical process, so all of this can affect your signal.

Verizon is supposedly running their fiber in the neighborhood, but it’s nowhere near ready.

I got a land line (and, wierdly enough, it was the guy who had installed DSL in an apartment six years ago — power of unions for ya), and he was selling the DSL service pretty hard. Numbers have come way up in speed, and you can get it without a landline charge I think.